home energy displays – Barneys New York display gathers favourite ‘SNL’ characters, elsewhere interactivity reigns – Yahoo! Canada News
Barneys New York display gathers favourite 'SNL' characters, elsewhere interactivity reigns - Yahoo! Canada News
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Tue Nov 17, 7:14 PM
By Samantha Critchell, The Associated Press
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NEW YORK - It's not quite the warm and fuzzy crowd one imagines around most Christmas trees, but Barneys New York is celebrating the holidays with a motley crew that includes Roseanne Roseannadanna, the Church Lady, Father Guido Sarducci and Wayne and Garth.
Two dozen "Saturday Night Live" favourites have been transformed into life-size, papier-mache ornaments to hang in the windows on Madison Avenue as the flagship store puts on its biggest visual show of the year. There's Will Ferrell as Janet Reno looking very prim and proper and Mike Myers as "Coffee Talk" Linda Richman with bright red nails and lips.
Atypical? Yes, but the quirky characters seem like they'd be right at home at a holiday party with Simon Doonan, Barneys' renowned creative director.
"We like to set ourselves apart by picking something that's a little out there," Doonan says. "Our windows can't be elitist, but we can't do 'traditional.' We'd have to make Santa out of ketchup or something if we went that way."
Doonan decided more than a year ago that this year's holiday message would, above all else, be witty. "We had to have fun - it had been such a dismal year," he says.
Holiday windows, he explains, are supposed to generate traffic, bring hoards of shoppers and tourists to the front of the store to "ooh" and "aah," and garner some media buzz. At the same time, the windows need to convey taste, luxury and humour, all of which he considers the core of Barneys brand.
So, just how will John Belushi's King Bee in the window help sell some of the most expensive apparel and accessories that hang on the racks inside?
He doesn't have to, exactly.
"What we've got to have in our windows is something 'current.' We look for things that have a surge of interest," says Doonan. The 35th anniversary of "SNL," coupled with its spot-on coverage of last year's election, convinced Doonan that now was the right time to honour these oddities of pop culture.
From the "SNL" side, costume designer Tom Broecker was eager to see what Doonan would do with already over-the-top caricatures. It's hard to pick just one favourite, Broecker says, but the version of Chris Kattan's Mango prompted a serious, hearty belly laugh.
The research for these particular windows was far more entertaining than recent 1960s and green themes, he says, although Doonan still has a soft spot for Rudolph the Recycling Reindeer. In the early months of 2009, the Barneys artistic team would spend lunch hours watching clips of the Coneheads on YouTube, and Doonan read old scripts.
They all became so obsessed with the Jane Curtin and Dan Aykroyd aliens from Remulak that the Coneheads get their own vignette in the windows. On the record player, you'll find a Con-ie Francis album and the bookshelves filled with "Cone With the Wind" and "Conehead Revisited."
"People will see these Coneheads and break into a big smile," Doonan says.
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Holiday displays around the U.S. provide free, festive entertainment - sometimes at the big, splashy stores, sometimes at small hidden gems:
-DALLAS:
Children visiting Neiman Marcus' flagship store this year will get the chance to be transported into its fancifully decorated windows. Typically, there's glass separating the viewer from the setting, but it's been replaced for the holiday season with a 24-metre plastic tube that kids can crawl right into, explains Ignaz Gorischek, a store vice-president.
Small video cameras will capture images of the children and broadcast them to the parents waiting on the sidewalk.
Displays surrounding the tube were inspired by schoolchildren's ideas on future energy sources. One window features "music energy," where musical instruments in a giant container are being ground up to fuel a hovercraft. Another features "peanut butter energy," where elephants walking on a conveyer belt grind up peanuts into peanut butter and then eat the treat, which gives them the energy to fly.
Neiman's windows, which will be unveiled Friday, also feature an about 4.5-metre-tall tree made entirely of books - which will be donated locally after the holiday season to organizations supported by First Book, a national organization that provides new books to children in need.
-LOS ANGELES:
Hipster boutique OOU has a front window in the Los Feliz neighbourhood that's just two metres wide, but that doesn't stop the shop's buyer, Theresa Goncalves, from organizing a crammed holiday panorama.
The window is inspired by a Vogue editorial, a winter escape for two friends, Goncalves says.
The mannequins will carry suitcases spilling clothes, posed to look as if they're running, with pine leaves on the floor, a blown-up photo of a pine forest in the background, and possibly a tree decorated with beads and rhinestones.
"It's kind of like they're running away, metaphorically, that they're escaping into the fantasy world, away from everyday life," says Goncalves. "We're going to dress them in vintage, but beaded, sequined, opulent luxury, over the top, but not too precious. But up close, it won't be perfect. There are imperfections. That's a sign of the times."
-CHICAGO:
Sidewalks along Chicago's State Street get crowded with people looking for a glimpse of the decorated windows that have been created at Marshall Field's since 1968 and now Macy's since 2006.
Over the years, famous fairy tale and children's movie characters like Cinderella and Mary Poppins have been featured. This season the Macy's windows will follow a letter on its route to the North Pole.
Macy's visual director Jon Jones says designers began planning "The Journey of a Letter to Santa Claus" back in May with illustrators, writers, sculptors and costume makers spending months to create the nine window scenes that collectively tell the story.
In all-important last window where it all comes together, Santa is collecting letters written by children and a digital counter ticks off wishes fulfilled.
-RALEIGH, N.C.
The Cameron Village shopping area is home to an annual holiday decor contest that fuels the creative juices of many of its stores. In previous years, belly dancers and puppies have taken places in windows, and the Lilly Pulitzer store Palm Avenue summoned Santa Claus and put him in cheerful printed shorts and a spot on a tiny beach. About 20 per cent of the retailers use live models in their windows.
Last year's winner was the designer boutique SoHo Clothing for its chicken-wire trees covered in recycled newspaper trim that paid homage to a local art museum's 50th anniversary. Owner Martha Parks says gloves are this year's theme, with trees made out of men's canvas gloves that look like dripping icing and others that mimic reindeer antlers.
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Associated Press writers Jamie Stengle, Solvej Schou, Caryn Rousseau and Martha Waggoner contributed to this report.
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Solar homes. Many people talk about them, although few in the U.S. do more than talk. They are said to reduce utility bills. Some say a solar home cuts utility bills drastically. Some are able to sell excess power back to the power grid. Savings are not automatic, however. Steps must be taken to make the solar home efficient; to conserve the electricity that is produced.
Ways to conserve solar photovoltaic power in the home must be found. The home owner must actively seek out ways to make those photovoltaic (PV) panels on the roof as efficient as possible. Photovoltaic power is free, but it cannot be generated in unlimited quantities. It is important to take measures to use it to best advantage.
Of all the ways to conserve solar photovoltaic power in the home, the most important is probably replacement of power-gobbling electric appliances. Home lighting can also be changed to conserve solar photovoltaic power (PV power). Finally, power usage can be reduced by making every person in the solar home conscious of conservation methods.
12 Ways to Conserve Solar Photovoltaic Power in the Home
1. Shop for energy-efficient appliances and home electronics for your solar home. Most products in this category carry EnergyGuide labels. These labels give an estimate of the products' energy consumption or energy efficiency, and show the ratings of similar appliance models. In the U.S., appliances and home electronics that meet strict Department of Energy (DOE) and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) energy efficiency criteria carry Energy Star labels.
2. Replace an electric water heater in a solar home with an energy-efficient propane or natural gas heater. Connect the new water heater to a solar water heater system. The sun will preheat the water, and the new unit will have less work. Wrap the water heater with thermal wrap to retain heat.
3. Replace the solar home's electric furnace with an energy-efficient propane or natural gas unit. Install a solar panel air heater to reduce the work load of the new furnace. If you are building a new solar home, consider passive ways to heat the floors and air, further reducing the workload.
4. If the solar home is in a hot, dry climate, use an evaporative cooling unit in place of an electric air conditioner.
5. Check weather stripping around all windows and doors. Seal cracks and openings. Stopping air leakage in and out can improve indoor climate control in every season.
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8. A serious solar home owner can save even further by using a solar oven for cooking whenever possible. Especially good in hot climates or summer months, a solar oven will cook food with solar energy, and avoid heating the home. Money is thus saved in two ways.
9. Control of computer usage is another of the many ways to conserve solar photovoltaic power in the home. Monitors should be turned off whenever the computer will not be in use for 20 minutes or more. The CPU and monitor both should be turned off when the unit will not be used for 2 hours or more. Power down or sleep modes should be set.
10. Replace light bulbs with Energy Star qualified compact fluorescent light bulbs. If every U.S. home replaced just one light bulb with one of these bulbs, we would save more than $600 million in annual energy costs. To the solar home owner, such savings are vital.
11. Maximize your use of daylight, turning on lights only when necessary. Use windows to advantage, and install skylights where possible.
12. Landscape your property to block the heat of summer sunlight, permit winter sunlight. Deciduous trees near the solar home will shade windows in the summer, and let warming sunlight through in winter months.
Ways to conserve solar photovoltaic power in the home are not limited to these twelve, but if these alone are used, the increase in efficiency will be tremendous.
About The Author
©2007, Anna Hart. Anna Hart invites you to read more of her articles about solar homes at http://www.solar-energy-connection.com. Anna has posted articles on that site about various applications of solar technology. If you would like information on designing and constructing a solar home air heater, you won’t want to miss Anna's article on the subject.
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